Today you will decide on how fracking will be allowed on Boulder County lands — whether to extend the moratorium, regulate it as an industrial activity or ban it outright. 

I would like to make you aware of a newly published report by no less than the World Bank — a rather credible source of information. 

Titled “Climate Change Report Warns of Dramatically Warmer World This Century”, (which you can read here) it conveys a strong and stark message: we must begin to switch the energy basis of our economies from fossil fuels to non-polluting alternative energy sources within the next 15 years, or else suffer increasingly extreme weather events — so dire that the collapse of human civilization will be a near certainty by the end of the century if we fail in this task. 

This is no joke. And natural gas is not a “bridge fuel.” We need to start the mitigation efforts to reverse gobal change here in Boulder County NOW! 

I know this means painful decisions must be made — politically, financially, emotionally — but we have no choice. Science, logic and reason are compelling us. We know in our hearts that our own conscience compels us. We all know that our love of Nature, and why we enjoy living in Colorado, compels us. 

This will be a historic decision. Stand with the brave sixty percent of Longmont who voted to do the right thing, in the face of threats from our governor and the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. You should all do the right thing too; it will be a sad and tragic page in Boulder’s proud history if you do not.

Sincerely, 

Rick Casey

Lafayette, CO

instructor, Environmental Economics, Front Range Community College